Definition of "multiply"

The motives to refuse obedience to government are many and strong ; impunity will multiply and enforce them

1786, Fisher Ames, Lucius Junius Brutus

It would indeed be easy to multiply modern authorities respecting locustal food; one more authority shall suffice, from which it will appear that the Arabs make a sort of locust bread.

1843, Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London

[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. […] Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, and that in several cases these bacteria were dividing and thus, by the perverse arithmetic of biological terminology, multiplying.

2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845

This follows a similar process, counters having to be removed and replaced at each stage of the remaining part of the calculation except the final one, where 2 multiplies 3 to give 6.

1983, Graham Flegg, Numbers‎, Dover, published 2002, page 154

Of all the possible combinations of factors above, only ( 2 ⋅ 4 ) + ( 3 ⋅ 5 ) = 23 {\displaystyle (2\cdot 4)+(3\cdot 5)=23} . Carefully arranging the factors, therefore, to ensure that 2 multiplies 4 and 3 multiplies 5, we have 6 x 2 + 23 x + 20 = ( 2 x + 5 ) ( 3 x + 4 ) {\displaystyle 6x^{2}+23x+20=(2x+5)(3x+4)}

1993, Edward T. Dowling, Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Mathematical Methods for Business and Economics‎, page 14

The extended instruction set may double the speed again if a lot of multiplies and divides are done.

1975, Byte, numbers 1-8, page 14

List the number of adds and multiplies for each of the forms (6) , (7), and (8).

2004, C. K. Birdsall, A. B. Langdon, Plasma Physics via Computer Simulation, page 75